1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the calculation of radiation field distributions, and is particularly useful in predicting neutron-dosimetry responses for nuclear reactor cavities and internal components.
2. Background Information
Various methodologies can be used to obtain numerical solutions of the Linearized Boltzmann Equation (LBE) for neutron and gamma radiation transport applications. The discrete ordinates method (SN) is one such methodology used, in particular, in the nuclear engineering field. The numerical solution of the SN equations is achieved through the concurrent discretization of the phase space, i.e., angular, spatial and energy domains. The concurrent discretization of the phase space leads to a large number of unknowns in the SN equations and therefore, extensive computational resources are required to solve this problem.
For large 3-D neutron and gamma transport applications, the main memory required to generate a numerical solution of the LBE using SN equations may exceed current computational capabilities of a typical single-processor workstation. For example, the solution of a full 3-D neutron transport problem for a typical 2-loop Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), characterized by approximately 1.5 million spatial meshes, an S8 quadrature set, a P3 expansion of the scattering kernel, and 47-neutron energy groups, can lead to a main memory requirement of approximately 45 GByte. The significant computational resources required may preclude the use of single-processor workstations to solve such problems.
It would be desirable to overcome these difficulties, by developing a new solution algorithm(s) for the SN equations to take advantage of multi-processor computing architectures, i.e., distributed memory architectures. For example, it would be desirable to configure a number of physically independent workstations linked together via a network backbone, to establish what is generally referred to as a cluster computing environment. This type of computing platform has found widespread applications in recent years especially in the fields of scientific computing and large scale numerical simulation. However, it is necessary to devise specialized algorithms in order to exploit the capabilities of a cluster environment.
Thus, there is room for improvement in a set of solution algorithms for the SN equations to take advantage of multi-processor computing architectures. There is also room for improvement in a methodology to obtain numerical solutions of the LBE for the calculation of radiation field distributions such as neutron and gamma radiation field distributions. Moreover, there is room for improvement of a methodology to predict dosimetry responses in an accurate and efficient manner for application in nuclear reactors.